


Inmates

by merentha13



Category: The Professionals
Genre: M/M, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-04-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:07:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merentha13/pseuds/merentha13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray's in jail and possibly in trouble, but he has a protector<br/>Chapter 2 added:  more danger for the lads</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Weekly Obbo at Tea & Swiss Roll  
> http://teaandswissroll.livejournal.com/493722.html#cutid1

Catcalls and whistles let me know somethin’ was goin’ on. New prisoner. Hands thrust through the bars to “welcome” the new blood. Except the new guy in #34. His hands were relaxed, just resting on the cross bars like all this was beneath him. Uppity bastard.

Guards on either side of the shackled man warned the inmates back with their truncheons and glares. They could keep the physical touches away, but the leers and the whistles were getting’ through. Could tell that by the stiffness of the walk and the hunched shoulders. Shouldn’t show fear, darlin’. Not here.

The keepers approached my cell and I finally got a good look at our latest guest. The overhead lights lit his battered features, limp curls, dull eyes and slim build. No! It couldn’t be – could it? The Terror of Stepney Green, PC Doyle - here?

“Step back,” the guard sent the end of his club through the bars to move me back. 

One unlocked the door and pushed his prisoner into the cell. They removed the chains around his ankles and wrists. I had to bite back a laugh as Doyle jumped when the cell door clicked shut behind him. Welcome to my world. He looked pretty much the same as I remembered, maybe a little worse for wear. Same cold eyes, hair a bit longer, and the damaged cheek. It was Doyle alright. The cheek hadn’t healed well. I still remember watching Preston slam Doyle’s face into the side of the dust bin in the alley, still remember the sickening sound of bone hitting the rust covered metal, the blood pouring from the wound and the soft whimper Doyle couldn’t stifle as he blacked out. We didn’t see him around after that. Rumour had him dead, or off the force, or moving up the ladder. Nothin’ I’d heard could explain what he was doin’ here now. He looked like he couldn’t believe it either. Those big eyes wide open and maybe a bit haunted. He had to know what was waiting for him when the inmates found out who he was.

“Doyle.”

He jumped and spun to face me.

“Nervous?”

He ignored my mocking tone and asked, “You know me?”

“I’m hurt, Constable, that you don’t remember me.”

He tipped his head to one side and studied me a moment. His gaze stripped me to the bone, catalogued and rejected me like the piece of rubbish he thought I was.

“I remember,” he raised a hand slowly, almost reluctantly, to his cheek and rubbed the strange lump. “Oh yeah, I remember.”

He looked around the cell, taking in the washstand, the privy, the beds. “Which one?”

“Top,” I answered.

He swung himself into the lower bunk, rolled onto his side, facing the wall, and went to sleep.

“Still cool as you please, eh Constable? We’ll see how long that lasts.”

 

Caught them in the showers this morning, Doyle and the other new one. Big good-lookin’ bloke, superior attitude with the muscles to back it up. Took a shine to our Ray right off, he did. I found blue-eyes pinning Doyle to the tiles, pressed tight against his back, hands runnin’ all over him. They were whispering something fierce. Doyle was angry; the other one, Bodie, seemed to be tryin’ to soothe ruffled feathers. I listened as best I could without bein’ seen. Mr Macho said something about takin’ advantage of the opportunity, and Doyle answered him with a dark and dirty laugh.

“C’mon, Sunshine, where else can we be this open?” Big hands slid through the suds runnin’ down Doyle’s back and followed them into the dark cleft between Doyle’s cheeks. His deep voice mocked, “We’re already in jail, what else can they do?”

Didn’t take a genius to see what was goin’ on. Strange, though, Doyle seemed to be encouraging the man, seemed to be enjoying it.

The sounds of the running water and the slap of skin on skin drown out their whispers. I was gettin’ hot watchin’. Wasn’t what you usually saw goin’ on in a place like this. It was almost, well, gentle, loving... Bodie threw his head back and groaned, the muscles in his back stood out starkly as he moved with Doyle, holding him tightly. It was pretty clear that no one else was going to get a piece of Doyle. There were “No Trespassing” signs hanging all over that one. Another groan and Doyle sagged back against Bodie’s chest. 

“Bet Cowley never saw this coming,” Ray smirked. They both giggled then and stiffened when they realised they weren’t alone. If looks could kill… 

I turned and hurried away, thinking about what I’d overheard. Cowley was some big name in CI5. Did those two work for him? Made sense, that did, Doyle havin’ been a copper and all. And if they did work for Cowley, what were they doing in here? Undercover? I had some checking to do. But whatever it turned out to be, I was going to stay out of the way. I’ve only got three months left in here and I’m not takin’ any chances on ruinin’ that.

 

Knew it was only a matter of time. Doyle was just too pretty for his own good. The slim build, the curly hair and angel face, and the way he moved; he looked to be begging for it. He’d held off several attempts on his virtue. One on one he was more than able to take care of himself. This time they came as a group. They’d surrounded him at breakfast, a group of four that had been following him around like vultures. He sat across the table from me and ate his meal as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Only someone who had spent time with him would’ve noticed the tension in his shoulders and around the corners of his eyes. Abrams, the lead bullyboy, reached out to run a hand through the curly hair. Doyle looked up but didn’t move. He smiled at Abrams. A large hand had settled on the back of Abram’s neck, gripping hard enough to make the man wince. 

“Are these gentlemen bothering you, Raymond?” Posh as you please and the menacing warning in the smooth voice was as clear and cold as the ice blue eyes that studied us all. That decided it for me. No matter what the two of them were doing in here, no one was going to be bothering Raymond Doyle.


	2. Inmates II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble comes to Bodie & Doyle's undercover as inmates

Another week had gone by and I’d forgotten that I’d sworn to myself that I wasn’t going to get involved. I only had a few months left on my sentence and then I’d be free. But when I heard what they’d planned, well, I couldn’t ignore it, no matter that their target was the man that had put me in here. Nobody deserved that fate. I thought about telling the guards, but they’re so bloody incompetent, and Doyle bein’ a bent copper and all, they’d probably look the other way at best or help the thugs out. Nobody likes a copper that’s turned bad, and this one had even put several of his own behind bars if the stories about him were true. There’s even talk that its some of them that he turned in that are pullin’ the strings to get him done. Don’t know about that. Tried to keep meself clean of it. But being inside gives you time to think, doesn’t it? Guess that’s all part of the plan; think about what you done, find some regret, some resolve to try to do better with your next chance…

Mad as I’d been at Doyle when he nicked me, all that thinkin’ made me see that he hadn’t been as bad as some. Tough as nails he was, with a holier-than-thou attitude, but he’d treated me fair. Oh, he let me know what he thought of me and what I’d done. A righteous bastard he was, but fair; his actions were by the book. I almost felt sorry for the young copper. All that idealism, just waitin’ for reality to bite him on the arse. He was in for a rude awakening to the real world. And it wasn’t long after that he got it.

I’d been released on a technicality – that’s what they called it anyway. What a laugh. Someone, somewhere down the line had messed up the paperwork and they had to let me go. Doyle was there, all anger and vitriol, yellin’at the policeman who had bollocks the record, cursing the system, and warning me, eyes flashing, that he’d better not see me again. Reminded me that my family needed me, that my son deserved a better father. Seemed kinda personal at the time and I wondered…

But, to both our regrets, he did see me again. I was there the night DC Doyle’s world finally crashed down around him, the night his fellow officers left him for dead behind a dustbin. I’ll never forget the anger mixed with desolation on that battered face; his eyes searching for understanding that didn’t exist. Was kind of surprising, that. I knew he had grown up on the streets. You could tell by the way he moved – quick with no wasted action – the way he was always on alert and by the way he fought. He didn’t learn those dirty street fighting tricks in any police academy. So I couldn’t figure out where his naïve expectations of justice came from. Maybe not naïve. – he knew the score. No, it was like he thought he could change the world and he had finally, painfully, realised that most of it was beyond redemption. Poor bugger. Never saw a look like that before; never want to see it again. That night’s brutality haunted me for years after, him too, I’ll wager. 

But that’s not important now. Sorry. What I’m gettin’ at is that no matter what he’d done, he’d always played fair with me and mine and I felt I’d owed him for that. So I decided to show a bit of thanks. 

I found myself alone with Doyle’s “protector”, Bodie, at the lunch table. He’d sent Doyle off for more coffee. He might’ve looked like he was paying attention to me, but he never lost track of Doyle.

He wasn’t as dim as he played, this one. I think he took a wry amusement in making people think he was just a thick, muscle bound yob. But he was much more than that. There was intelligence in those baby-blues, if one took the time to look.

Where Doyle was like a firework, light the fuse and the explosion isn’t long in coming, Bodie was cool. He let his anger smoulder and build. He was the one in control of himself, of his emotions. What appeared to most as his not giving a flying fuck was really him plotting how best to remove the irritation. Their partnership shouldn’t work. They are so different, like fire and ice. But it does work and pity the man who gets caught between them.

“You like ordering him about, yeah?”

He let out a dark laugh. “Yeah, but I’m going to pay for the privilege for a long time.”

I had no doubt about that. He studied me, caught me watching Doyle pouring coffee, and tipped his head to one side. “He’s getting to you, then?”

I laughed. “I should be wantin’ to break the other side of that arrogant face...”

“But?” Bodie was reading more of me than I liked.

“I just don’t understand why he’s put himself in this spot. With his history with the police and all. You I can see, you don’t have a past with this lot to put you in danger. He’s known in here. He had to be aware of that.”

He smiled, a bit sadly it seemed. “Ray and I had this very conversation before we agreed to be put in here.”

“He told me.”

“I’ll bet he did,” he snorted. “I was against it. Wanted to use a different agent. But Ray insisted. He said seeing PC Doyle in here would make them careless, make them move before they were ready. And he was right. So here we are.” He was quiet for a minute and then asked “After his part in putting you in here, why do you care what happens to him?” There was genuine confusion in his eyes and in the question.

“I may be a crim,” I decided to be honest with him, “but I am not a stupid man. I got caught up in some things I should have left alone, got greedy. I had a business of my own, was doin’ alright for me and me family until someone came by with an offer that seemed to good to be true. Turns out it was. Doyle knew me. He would call in periodically when he was on the beat. He knew my wife and son. He’d tried to warn me about my new friends. I brushed him off. After the arrest, he checked up on my family, made sure no one was bothering them.” I looked at Bodie and saw surprise break through that stoic mask he usually wore. He didn’t know this story, didn’t often see this side of his partner. “I was there the night they broke his face. It’s good to know they didn’t break his spirit.”

“No, they didn’t get that,” Bodie sounded almost proud, “and that’s why he’s in here now, trying to right some more wrongs.”

We watched Doyle walk back towards us and I saw Bodie’s mask drop back into place. I remembered why I had wanted to talk to this man.

I warned him that somethin’ involving Doyle was brewing. He raised that mocking eyebrow and smiled. “That so?” That’s all he said, like he was amused. Cocky bastard. Got my dander up, that did. Here I was tryin’ to help and “old blue eyes” looked at me like I was a wet-behind-the-ears school boy tattling to the teacher. I told him to fuck off and left him to deal with it. I know now that he was just tryin’ to keep me out of it, to protect me in some way, because, at the end of the day, he did take me seriously. Could see that in the way he was never far from Doyle. The cheeky sod even winked at me a couple of times when he saw me watchin’ the two of ‘em.

 

But this was real life, not some show on the telly, and eventually the thugs were able to separate the tough guy from Doyle long enough for them to get Doyle alone. I think a couple of the guards were in on it. During a game of footie in the yard, Bodie was tripped up, accidentally taking two guys down with him as he fell. The guards assumed a fight was breakin’ out and coshed Bodie on the back of the head. He dropped like a ton of bricks and was hauled off to the infirmary. Doyle, meanwhile, was bundled off by Abrams and his gang. The guards pretended not to see. I’m no hero, but this just didn’t sit right with me. I followed them as they dragged Doyle down the dark corridor to the laundry. They knew I had my own reasons for hating the curly-haired scruff, so no one questioned my being there. Doyle had made sure we kept up the pretence of the hatred, even after we had come to a cautious understanding – being cell mates and all. He had made it clear to me that he didn’t want me involved in whatever it was he and the macho-man were doing. The acidic words he spat at me as he fought against the men manhandling him into the empty laundry let me know he didn’t want me around now either. As in the past, I ignored him. You’d’ve thought I’d’ve learned, yeah? Because he was right. I didn’t belong there.

They tied him up with strips torn from dirty sheets and hung him from a laundry hook high in the ceiling. His feet didn’t reach the floor and his body spun wildly with every blow. He never cried out; never gave them the satisfaction. It made them mad, made them try harder. Eyes closed, jaw locked, he absorbed every punch. They finally tired of the game. Doyle had long since lost consciousness. They cut him down and he dropped boneless to the floor. They shot him up with something to keep him quiet and wrapped him up in another sheet. Then they stuffed him in a laundry bin, buried under dirty towels and bedding. We left. I took a last look back, but there was no indication he’d come around. They hadn’t killed him; that wasn’t their plan. They wanted him to know that they could get to him, even with his protector. They wanted him to feel vulnerable. They wanted him afraid.

I went back to my cell, frustrated that there wasn’t anything I could do and then I remembered. Late one night, after I’d realised who he was, Doyle had apologised to me. It was after one of the first brief altercations with Abram’s gang. He was patching himself up as best he could in the cell and he had turned to me, big green eyes all serious. He’d beckoned me close, put an arm around my shoulders to make it look like we were…well, let’s just say that anyone coming by the cell wouldn’t be wanting to disturb us. And then he’d apologised. Said he was sorry to have me involved in this, that he was supposed to have been given a cell of his own or be put in with Bodie. He hadn’t wanted an innocent cellmate to be dragged into what he and Bodie were doing. Innocent! Me! This was prison, no such thing as innocent. But he dismissed my protests, looking at me with regret. He told me to watch myself, like I hadn’t been doin’ that all along. He said he’d protect me as best he could. Protect me. He was the one everyone in here seemed to want a piece of. He told me then what he and “old blue eyes” were doing – looking for evidence of corruption at the highest level of the prison. They knew who they wanted, but they needed proof. He was waiting for someone to make a move against him. They were going to take the ring leader back to CI5 and break him, get the information they needed to make an arrest. I couldn’t believe he’d risk himself like that and told him so, flat out. He had laughed then, a real laugh that lit up his eyes. 

“It’s not funny,” I told him. 

“No,” he calmed down, “No, it’s not. It’s just that I had this same conversation with Bodie before we started this.”

Then he looked at me, his eyes hard, all traces of amusement gone. 

“If anything happens to me or Bodie, before we can finish this, call this number.” Doyle gave me a phone number and he repeated it several times, until I had it memorised. “Tell the man who answers everything you know.”

I started to protest, he could read the fear in my eyes.

“He’ll play you straight. Give him the information. He’ll see to it that we all get out of here. Trust me on this.”

I could only nod, the intensity of his expression burning through my doubts. He had me repeat the number and gave me a handful of coins to make the call. We never spoke of it again.

 

Bodie was back in his cell, plaster showing behind his ear, casually leaning against the bars of the cell door, hand resting on the lock. The picture of cool. He smiled at Abrams and his thugs as they walked past - a smile with no warmth.

“It’s bad,” I mumbled as I walked by, “laundry bin.”

His stance never changed, but the ice in his eyes cracked and I saw real fear there, but it was quickly covered. And I knew the fear wasn’t for himself, but for Doyle. I don’t know what was real and what was faked in the roles they were playing in here, but there was real care between them. Bodie, for all his aloof coldness and despite his patronising attitude, really was partial to Doyle. And I realised then that they were together, that the scenes in the shower room and the quiet moans in the night weren’t faked for their cover story – it was all real. And I couldn’t imagine how two tough hard arses like them survived in their world as poofters. Couldn’t fathom the courage it took to watch a lover voluntarily take on the risks that could very easily end in death or worse. And for what? For a city that didn’t know or care about either of them. It wasn’t just Doyle who was the idealist, then. No, Bodie was no idealist. He was pragmatic. He saw a job that needed doing and did it. Daft buggers, both of them.

So I called the number Doyle had given me. Whoever was at the other end sure had some clout. I had barley hung up the phone and we were in a lock-down, everyone in their own cell. Except Bodie. He raced off to the laundry, taking a few guards with him. Don’t know what happened to them after that. I found myself hustled off with a couple of men who said they were with CI5. And here I am.

“Yes, here you are,” the small but formidable man leaned forward and turned off the tape recorder. He studied me intently. I couldn’t suppress a shiver. I thought Bodie had cold eyes.

“Tell me,” he asked, “you have no love for Doyle, why did you help him? You risked yourself, your parole. Why?”

“He always played straight with me. Helped me family out a bit when I was inside the first time. He didn’t deserve what happened to him in there. Is he all right?”

“An honourable man, our Doyle.” He ignored my question. “I’ve had your sentence commuted.” He stood, ending the interview. “You’re free to go.”

I got up from my chair and turned to leave. He held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said quietly. He walked to the door without saying anything else, but he didn’t need to speak the words for me to see how much those two men meant to him. I hoped they knew.

“Is he all right?” I asked again.

“Aye. He’s in hospital. Bodie’s with him. He’ll recover. Doyle told me of your part in this. He refused care until I promised to get you released.” He seemed to want to say more, but just shook his head and reached for the door.

“Was it worth it?” I couldn’t let it go.

“You’ll have to ask him.” He left.

Ask him? No, I don’t think I want to run into either of them anytime soon. But there was a comfort in knowing that men like Bodie and Doyle were out there. Even hurt, Doyle still wanted to play fair. I silently wished him Godspeed. He was going to need it in a world that has no room for his kind, a principled man in a world with no use for integrity. 

Poor bugger.


End file.
